Syrian Dust: Reporting from the Heart of the War

by Francesca Borri

  The cappuccino in Livorno, at the café in the train station, was magnificent. I came back for a training session in HEAT, which would be Hostile Environment Awareness Training, an intensive course which is now required for war correspondents. Which doesn’t exist in Italy, however, since foreign affairs in Italy are limited to attending Juventus’s away games. And so the only course to attend is the one for officials of the European Union organized by the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa and the Carabinieri Corps of Tuscania, the special forces stationed in Livorno.

  It’s a training session in which you basically learn how to react in an ambush, or if you should step into a minefield. You learn to decipher a map. To communicate by satellite, to encrypt communications, stanch a severed vein, take cover from enemy fire, things like that. Like don’t rattle your kidnappers. Because in war everything works ass-backwards. And whereas the last thing a normal person, so to speak, would think of doing when approaching a checkpoint is to switch off the headlights and arrive at the post with the headlights out (I don’t know about you, but I’m from the South, and in Puglia only smugglers drive with their headlights off), here you have to drive up to a checkpoint with your headlights off and interior lights on, because that’s the only way the guard on duty is able to see you and identify you. Well, to make a long story short, they teach you these kinds of things. Otherwise you’d act properly, turn on your headlights and fasten your seat belt, here in a war where everybody is armed, and they might mistake you for a smuggler at the first checkpoint and shoot you.

  Because an entirely different logic applies in war. For example, the first lesson for soldiers is that it’s better to wound than to kill. Because if you kill the enemy, he’ll be left lying there and his comrades will go on fighting. But if you wound him, he’ll start writhing, struggling for breath, and the whole unit will be out of action at that point because they’ll have to help him. Everything about war is like that. Certain subtle lines of reasoning that you listen to admiringly, and then you think: we might use all this ingenuity in cancer research.

  Well, anyway. For a week I’m here in Livorno with the Carabinieri.

  Actually another reason I came back to Italy is because they finally figured out what the infection was, after I returned from Aleppo the last time, throwing up in the street every couple of yards and passing out in front of my door in Antakya. It was typhus. Despite being vaccinated and all. A particularly violent strain. And needless to say I’m very proud of my typhus. I nearly celebrated when the doctors pronounced it. I swear, I would have made a toast, were it not that I felt nauseous just taking a sip of water. Because since I’m the only woman in Aleppo, the others with all their testosterone insisted that it was a psychological thing. While I lay there with a fever and cramps, they kept saying, no, it was all in my head, it was fear, it was because I was too fragile for war. And so, in front of the shocked doctors who’d confirmed that it was typhus, typhus! I called Lorenzo and with my last ounce of strength told him: “You see? I have typhus! I have typhus!” I chirped happily, before ending the call and passing out again. At which one doctor said to the other: “Still, I wouldn’t rule out that it’s psychological.”

  After being on a drip for a while, here I am, back again. Pretty emaciated but still standing.

  Except that I’m in this weird course. I don’t mean weird because of the Carabinieri— the Tuscania corps are “special” forces in the true sense of the word. They’re stationed where the soldiers are but to apply the methods of a police force; that is, they’re there to ensure order, not to demolish it—a difference which to soldiers, especially American soldiers, is not always clear. No, I mean weird because—take mortars, for example. With good reason, because it’s a subject that particularly interests me. Gabriele, the captain, is very kind, and also very patient, since he has to explain it to me four times. What I want to know is: When the first one explodes, given that a second one is coming, where should I run? To the right, to the left? Straight ahead? Or maybe I should stay still. But stay still where? On the ground? Behind a wall? And Gabriele is very considerate. The mechanism, he says, is simple, it’s like a range between two points. The first blow lands a little in front, the second a little behind. The third is the one meant to hit. And, I confess, I’m a little unclear on how to tell in front from behind. But most of all: “Hit what?” I ask him. He looks at me, puzzled. He says: “Hit the target.”

  So the mortar has a target then.

  “Of course,” he says. “It’s not as if you fire at random.”

  Right. It’s not as if you fire at random.

  And then, things like the criteria for choosing a specific house. 1) Far away from the front. 2) If possible, not near sensitive targets such as a government office or barracks. 3) Preferably close to essential services. Like a market. Or a pharmacy. To avoid having to cross half the city at night in search of toothpaste. And my question is: “What about when essential services are sensitive targets?” “Well,” Gabriele says, “then near the hospital.” The hospital, he says, is always the safest bet.

  The hospital. “And what if the hospital were, let’s say, too far away? And there’s shooting, everywhere. Where should I take cover? Given that the hospital—let’s say you can’t take shelter there.”

  “Well,” Gabriele says, “then the refugees. You mix in with the refugees. They can’t very well fire at the refugees,” he says.

  Of course.

  The refugees.

  They can’t very well fire at the refugees.

  War has its rules. Its manuals.

  It’s not as if you fire at random.

  And so in the evening I study. Or at least I try to. For instance, I study how a satellite phone works. Then I remember Marie Colvin, a correspondent for the Sunday Times, killed in Homs, and I think that with a satellite phone they can pinpoint you, in Syria, and drop a mortar on your head. So I switch to another chapter. I look for the chapter on snipers. Because that subject, too, is of particular interest to me. But there isn’t one, there’s no chapter on snipers because if a sniper hits you, you’re dead, even with the best flak jacket. And so there’s no chapter on snipers. Next I study how to recognize a rebel. A rebel a) is positioned in a chain of command, b) has a visible weapon, c) is wearing a distinguishing badge, d) — d) I think the most distinctive thing I’ve seen, in Syria, to be able to tell if someone is a rebel, are the flip-flops. And so every evening I end up trying to study, but then I close the book and read something else. Because they are always so reassuring, these manuals. And like the international law manuals, there are civilians and combatants, and there is a front, always; there’s a here and a there, and there are also journalists, with their press badge. There’s never anyone in these manuals who has been incinerated by a missile that he didn’t hear coming.

  Meanwhile there’s a knock at the door. I put the book down and open up.

  It’s Ronan, one of two Irish members of the special forces. They’re here as instructors of a similar course. The two of them are really proficient, with years of experience all over the world; watching them in action is like being at the movies. We have supper together, usually. They’re intrigued by Syria, and more interested in Syrians suffering through the war than in those fighting it. And so we meet for supper.

  “In the spring we’d like to have you in Dublin,” Ronan tells me. “A conference. It would be interesting if you were to come and tell us how things are in Syria.”

  “You could tell us how the war is changing,” he adds.

  We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty. Over us, Chance hovers. If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall. [. . .] It is just as much a matter of chance that I am still alive as that I might have been hit. In a bomb-proof dug-out I may be smashed to atoms and in the open may survive ten hours’ bombardment unscathed. No soldier outlive
s a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.

  It’s 1918 in the book I’m reading: All Quiet on the Western Front.2

  * * *

  1The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  2Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front, trans. A. W. Wheen (New York: Fawcett Books, 1982), 10

  SPRING 2013

  April is April even in Syria, sprightly, its hills newly speckled, all primroses and violets, the white flowering boughs of almond, the orange of the tulips, and this mild, gentle wind, laden with sunlight and jasmine. By contrast, in the house to your left, yesterday—it was nearly evening—Asma committed suicide. A bullet to the head. April isn’t April in Syria. She was thirteen years old.

  The province of Idlib, in the north, borders on Turkey, and was the first to be captured by the rebels who have their bases in Turkey. But a “liberated area,” here, is by no means a safe zone. Because this is the land of missiles: every day they drop down on you, randomly, unexpectedly. The rebels still have no anti-aircraft protection other than bad weather and haze. Missiles and Islamists. They come from Libya, from Tunisia, from Afghanistan, veterans of a thousand other wars; without them the regime would already have suppressed every revolt. No one knows what their objectives really are. They are feared and invisible. Few Kalashnikovs around, few checkpoints. Life seems to go on as usual, but everything is chaos, everything unreadable. It’s a dry wind that blows, sun-drenched and thick with fear.

  Jabal al-Zawiya is a nature reserve studded with Roman and Byzantine tombs, stretches of meadow among pale, barren rocks. But then you spot a glitter, under a stone arch, in shadow, hidden among the bushes, and it’s the metal of a teapot. Between a book lying sodden in the grass, a torn strip of a shirt, you see a silvery reflection. And it’s not one of the many rocks, but a plastic tarp.

  It’s a door.

  They emerge from underground, dozens of them. Gaunt, barefoot, looking haggard and tattered. They took refuge here, to await the end of the war in this damp, fetid air, the vaults of the crypts blackened by the carbon of wood-burning stoves. They sleep on the sepulchers. And they cough, they cough continuously from tuberculosis, like Nader Khaled al-Badwy, twenty-six, and his wife Sanaa, twenty-two, nineteen-month-old Omar in her arms. Nader turns a box of medicine around in his hands: it’s the only thing he found in the pharmacy, the instruction sheet is in English. “Better than nothing,” he says. It’s medicine for meningitis. All they have is bread and tea, rainwater to drink. Another child, seven months old, is in Turkey; every so often they try to send her a bottle of mother’s milk through a smuggler. They’ve been here since September, and since September not a soul has passed through. Not an NGO, not the Red Cross. Not a single doctor without borders. No one. They’ve received no aid whatsoever. Nor do they have the slightest expectation, by now. I ask them about the National Coalition, the organization of opposition forces based in Istanbul, which recently appointed a prime minister and a provisional government. What would they ask the Coalition for, if they could? Their only response is: sugar.

  The hills look the same as always in Syria, but then you notice these tall, scrawny trees, looking like spikes stuck in the ground, spaced apart from each other, these strange trees, and you don’t get it. These spikes. Then you realize that they are just tree trunks, their branches missing. To keep warm, people here sawed off the branches. One by one. “But not the trees. This is a protected park.”

  They live crowded together, twenty-two of them, in these two underground tombs. The youngest is called Malaki, she’s two months old, and you can barely see her in her cradle amid the flies. They are the families of Ahmad Omar al-Yahya, forty-five, and Basam al-Amnou, forty-two. They buried everything under an olive tree. And they moved in here, ducking their heads, the vaults too low, a cigarette lighter for illumination, the only latrine marked not so much by a wall of bricks and the ooze of sewage, as by a swarm of insects. Beetle casings, and when it rains, the tombs get flooded so they stay outside. Out in the rain. One little boy has a bruised face, a broken wrist, because they slither in through steep passages, muddy tunnels, and he slipped a week ago. Their homes, in nearby al-Bara, were swept away by an air strike, eleven families pulverized. As of today, 6 missiles and 275 mortars have hit al-Bara, population 5,000. The one we hear now is number 276. A mortar, we say, then we go on talking.

  Refugees of the Syrian War—which as of March 15 had been going on for two years—number more than a million. But the UN’s statistics refer to evacuees in the camps set up in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iraq. They don’t record the IDPs (internally displaced persons) who have remained here. Who are estimated to be four million, and who have nothing. Nothing. The international NGOs are still settling in, still at the border, engaged in yet another assessment and planning meeting, while the local ones are often nothing more than impromptu acronyms of Syrians who have returned after years abroad to pocket donations. And the UN, by statute, operates through the Damascus government, with the result that aid is distributed in areas under the control of the regime. “But to get to Turkey is costly . . .” Mariam al-Mohamad, fifty-seven, explains, interrupted by another explosion. “It’s partly that we’re afraid of looting, and we don’t want to leave. But it’s also true that a car to the border costs $300, and three cars would be needed for an average family. Almost a year’s salary. The truth is that to become refugees is a luxury we cannot afford.”

  Ahmad Haj Hammoud is thirty-one years old, and every day at 8 a.m. on the dot he clocks in to work in Idlib. He’s a public employee there. Only the province is actually under rebel control. Everything in the city functions as usual, shops, offices. Schools. And there are many like Ahmad: part of the regime by day, its victims by night. “But I need the money,” he says briefly. “And I just want this war to end.” A great many in Syria are neither with Assad nor with the rebels. They’re simply tired. Caught between a vicious regime and the opposition: disorganized twenty-year-olds with T-shirts and rifles. “Not only don’t they have any plan for the future. The problem is that they don’t even have rules for the present. They only think about themselves. They confiscated the granaries, the flour, and left everyone to starve, saying that the front took priority. That they need energy to win. To liberate us. But to be liberated, we must be alive.”

  Another explosion meanwhile. They’re fighting a few miles from here in Maraat al-Numan. It’s right above Aleppo-Damascus. Strategic for a southward advance. The name Maraat al-Numan is a graft of the Greek name Arra, the Christian name Marre, and the location’s first Muslim ruler, an-Numan ibn Bashir. “A synthesis of the Syria of old, in which we all lived together,” says Habib al-Hallaq, twenty-six, a Sunni deserter who in Damascus had a house in an Alawite district. “A synthesis of today’s Syria,” Noura Nassouh, forty-seven, his neighbor in the tomb, corrects him. “In which we are all killed, without distinction.”

  Because April isn’t April in Syria, and in this illusory spring studded with buds and mortars, this is how they live, on bread and tea and rainwater. What seems like silver is instead plastic. What seems like stillness, is death. They are workers, a greengrocer, a house painter, a policeman, but also biologists and engineers, dropped here with a degree, a doctorate, exhausted, in this life in the wild, waiting for it to be over, wrapped up like beggars in whatever they’ve been able to find, hair like stubble, that drained, haggard expression and eyes like ashes. On their cell phones, beautiful photographs of Aleppo, of Damascus, of homes with pastel painted tiles, wrought iron lamps. They talk in choppy phrases, head down, while with their bare hands they try to shape a sheet of metal into a tray and cut themselves. A trickle of blood barely oozes its way through the scabs, calluses, and blisters on their fingers. All they’ll say is: “I had a life like yours once. Ray-Bans just like yours.”

  Suad is fifteen days old and her eyes are already red and wrinkly; she was born here, i
n a tomb, in a dawn of missiles. Her mother’s name is Adlalh Ziady, she’s nineteen years old and stares at me in silence, her skin sallow. Meanwhile a mortar explodes, someone dies, and while I think about what to ask her, she goes on staring at me in silence. While I think: What does it feel like, to give birth in a tomb? Are you afraid? Uncertain? And when this revolution started, when the demonstrations started, did you imagine it would be like this? While she goes on staring at me in silence, not a word. And I keep thinking, as another mortar explodes: Did they bomb your house? And where were you? I think, and how does it feel when they bomb your house? And foolishly: What do you need most urgently, milk? medicine? The sting of shame, when you come out of the tomb, children have picked all those flowers for you, and cling to your arm, as if you were worthy, as if you were here to save them, and instead they don’t know, with their flowers, they don’t know, we’re only here for another article that won’t seduce any consciences, not even our own, as they cling to your arm and don’t know, they don’t know that they don’t matter, because what is there to understand, still, in Syria, what is there to ask? While Adlalh stares at me in utter silence and doesn’t speak. And rightly so, because she has nothing to say, as another mortar explodes and a woman hunched in the corner, her fifty years seeming more like seventy, three children dead, not even a body remaining, covers her face with her hands, motionless, and she too is silent. If the Syrians have ended up in crypts, Syrian women have ended up huddled in the corners.

  It’s Spoon River in reverse, this life in which the living, from their tombs, talk to the dead, who watch and don’t hear. Amen al-Yassin is thirty-seven years old, and together with his wife, his mother, and eleven children, the youngest five months old, lives in a stable, among goats and chickens. On a shelf are grimy jars of olives and spices, a sack of potatoes, moldy bread, that’s all; hanging from a dog chain, there’s laundry so tattered that you can’t say if something is a shirt or a sweater, or what color it is. Their house, in Kafr Kouma, is in ruins, and they haven’t found another place. For this stable, which can be hit by a missile at any time, just like their old house, they pay 5,000 lire per month, compared to the 4,000 lire they paid in rent before—but for a real house. Because only in novels do war and poverty inspire solidarity: in real life they breed speculation, borders populated with traffickers and wheeler-dealers. You pay for everything here, for a car to Turkey, for a bottle of mother’s milk. To sleep in a chicken coop. And you pay three times the normal rate. Another mortar. “I’m looking for a tomb. But they’re all occupied now. And the remaining ones, on private lands, are even more expensive.”